The Wolf of Wall Street v 12 Years a Slave: which film deserves your time more?

They’re the two films you can’t miss right now but there’s only time to see one. So are you a Leo or a Lupita? Nick Curtis screens your movie options

Wednesday 22 January 2014 10:46 BST

Time-poor Londoners face the same problem as film award juries: how on earth to choose between 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street. Both favourites for multiple Oscars, both based on true stories, and both highly finished pieces of cinema from directors at the height of their powers, they’re the only films that all your friends are talking about. But since both have a running time of well over two hours — TYAS is 134 minutes long, WOWS 180 minutes — well, let’s face it… most of us only have time to see one.

There are superficial similarities. Both movies explore the more or less recent past and tell us something about the world we live in today, and both deal with those who value profit over human life. But that’s about all they have in common. 12 Years a Slave is a work of high seriousness and moral purpose that aims to inform and provoke rather than merely entertain. The Wolf of Wall Street is a sprawling, orgiastic yuck-fest that covers its celebration of excess with a skimpy modesty patch of morality.

So are you a Slave or a Wolf? The one you choose probably says more about the person you are than you’d like. To help you make the decision, the Evening Standard is happy to lay out the chief reasons for seeing each, below.

TEN REASONS TO SEE 12 YEARS A SLAVE

1. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance

The London-born Nigerian actor gives a masterclass in understatement and internalisation as Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. It’s for those who like to engage with and work at a film. Think Samuel Beckett rather than PT Barnum.

2. The woman

The luminous Lupita Nyong’o, wrenchingly affecting as the serially raped slave Patsey, is this year’s breakout star. You’ll want to see the role that has made her.

3. The script

Northup, told by another slave to surrender to his fate says: “I will not fall into despair until freedom is opportune.” (Triumph of the human spirit in an inhumane world.)

4. The sound and cinematography

Hans Zimmer’s score, plus the original period music arranged by Nicholas Britell, combine with Sean Bobbitt’s eerie photography of the landscape to make the very land and air of mid-19th century Louisiana seem poisonous and alien.

5. It’s a British film

Director Steve McQueen was born in Hanwell, star Ejiofor in Forest Gate: it’s unlikely a film about slavery in America made solely by Americans would have been so demanding and brutally frank.

6. It’s brave

There is salutary boldness in McQueen’s unflinching portrayal of whippings, abuse and hangings, and in the willingness of his actors (Paul Dano, Michael Fassbender — though not Brad Pitt) to appear utterly, irredeemably loathsome. Compare Leonardo DiCaprio’s pantomime slave owner in Django Unchained with Fassbender’s in 12 Years…

7. It renders us all complicit

No resident of multicultural London can watch McQueen’s film without being uncomfortably reminded that the British Empire and Western capitalism in general were drenched in slave blood.

8. It’s a sea change

After so many false dawns, McQueen’s film has proved stories about the black experience can have huge critical and commercial clout. It furnished many terrific black actors with meaty roles and prompted the UK government to investigate ways to stem the drain of black acting talent to America.

9. It limits Paul Giamatti to one scene

… and doesn’t let him do that head-on-one-side, ironic-laugh schtick he falls into in everything else he does.

10. it’s important, dammit

As McQueen’s wife Bianca Stigter notes, there are more films about Roman slave Spartacus than about the far more relevant and immediate Atlantic slave trade. It’s worth seeing just to have your consciousness raised.

Read more about 12 Years a Slave

TEN REASONS TO SEE THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

1. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance

Leo’s performance as hyper-corrupt stockbroking mogul Jordan Belfort is a showboating, grandstanding, balls-out, slapstick-studded tour de force from the only A-lister ever filmed with a candle up his bottom (for the public screen, at least). The bastard offspring of Nicholson and Chaplin.

2. The women

Ex-Neighbours actress Margot Robbie, who plays Jordan’s wife Naomi, is a sleek-limbed, cobalt-eyed, stone-cold fox. Period. And there are loads of other fit women in it, although few of them are given names or more than a sentence-worth of character-description.

3. The script

Belfort, demanding Quaaludes as his superyacht founders in a storm. “I. Will. Not. Die. Sober!” (The American dream cannot bear very much reality.)

Equally at home with blue-collar hustlers, the Mob and the excesses of the top one per cent, Scorsese is always safely entertaining even when, as here, he is cannibalising bits of Goodfellas, Casino and The Aviator and letting scenes run at twice their necessary length.

6. It’s cheeky

The Wolf currently holds the record for the most uses of the word “fuck” in a single film.

7. It brings back memories

Oh, man, the Nineties were brilliant. The drugs, the strip clubs, the cars, the rebranding of greed…

8. It proves that irony is dead

Banks are vying to put on screenings and howl with delight at Jordan Belfort’s outrageous swagger and even more outrageous deals. Which is a bit like racists putting on screenings of 12 Years a Slave.

9. It’s got a cameo by Joanna Lumley…

… as Jordan’s wife Naomi’s English aunt; also minor roles for Rob Reiner and Jon Favreau but not, thank goodness, for Robert De Niro, whose appearance is not the guarantee of quality it once was.

10. It’s fun, stupid

Not every film can or should aspire to be a work of art. Londoners’ lives are hectic and demanding and sometimes we just want to kick back, relax and whoop it up a little. As MGM put it: that’s entertainment.